An Arab-American woman sees signs of hope.

February 12, 2009

I'm twittering random links, none of which have to do with the Middle East. I do have other interests (although reading Bolano's 2666 makes me think I need to write Gaza 2006 into this novel, along with Ain el-Hilweh 1982)

Not linked: Family storytelling night at my kid's public school. Hokey magic show, free pizza and raw veggies and juice, book giveaways. The kids were SO EXCITED. I really savor these simple down-home pleasures with the children at the public schools: the fall harvest festival with goofy games and costumes, the winter concerts with singing and poems, these family nights.

Writing group after storytelling (I didn't bring my kids, natch). We finished talking about Bolano's 2666, then read to each other from our latest work. Our host made a Mediterranean soup with feta cheese; others brought bread, salad, cheese and fruit. And CHOCOLATE. I am so fortunate.

October 21, 2008

Just a little advice from Warren Buffett. He told his rich friends several years ago to sell all their real estate and rent. When he talks, I listen. But as a Lazy Investor I will be following this suggestion by continuing to let our 401(k) do what it does, which is buy stock every paycheck, whether the market is down or up. It's called dollar-cost averaging.

Update: The New York Times has a page devoted to Warren Buffett. Today it's running this Dove's Eye View post as a link! Thanks for the traffic, oh robot aggregator of the Times. Everybody else, consult the link for Buffett information.

September 16, 2008

"Everything is transitory. We can lose everything in an instant, and we do lose everything in an instant. We have to find home in ourselves," says Joyce Zonana. "That's really the theme of the book."

Writer and professor of English Joyce Zonana befriended me through the internet and sent me her new memoir, Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina...

I felt such kinship with this book. Zonana was born in Cairo, to a Sephardic Jewish family; her mother lived not far from the apartment where I lived during my first marriage to a native Cairene; Zonana's family left Egypt and moved to Brooklyn, where she grew up; she moved around the South in her adulthood, finally making a long term home and career in New Orleans, only to lose it all in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Zonana landed in a studio close to my last apartment in New York.

Joyce's story is not like mine at all, but we share two neighborhoods of two great cities, as well as other common interests and sensibilities. The story of her Arab Jewish family and their odyssey from Cairo to the Americas is richly told, full of drama and poignancy and vivid sensory experience. The back of the book features her family recipes! A writer after my own heart.

Today as I was musing on why I don't feel panic about the latest financial crisis, Joyce sent me this link via instant messenger. The above quote jumped out at me.

Like Joyce, I have seen how one can lose everything in an instant. My father's family lost their homes and our ancestral village in one terrible day in 1985. I lost a breast and my feeling of corporeal invincibility in 2004. I lost my father in two short months of 2006, while Israeli bombs rained down upon the land he could not reach. Two cousins died in their prime that year, suddenly and without warning. In 2007 with my new diagnosis of cancer, I lost a great deal more: My hair again. My physical strength and vigor. My timeline for my future.

And yet in losing we always find... new life, new ways of looking at life. Those of us who lose our homes can find new homes. Sometimes we are lucky and we can return to our old homes, clean out the mud, patch over the bullet holes, repaint, renew. Yet nothing is ever what it had been - not the reconstructed breast, not the reconstructed house, not the city neighborhood, which has changed in the years you have lived away.

Sometimes we think we are unlucky and have to make new lives while grieving homes, or cities, or bodies lost to us seemingly for good. And yet this moment is always the only moment we have, and this city, this home, this body is the only one we are in right now.

I learned over the last year that in time I need to finish grieving the past, finish grieving the losses of the past, even of the recent past. One grieves and then one looks around and notices: I am breathing. The sun is shining (or it's raining, or foggy, or snowing). I have a place to live, thank God, and a bed to sleep in, and my body is still alive, changed though it may be.

Yes, we must find home in ourselves - in some changeless self that is not body, not home, not city, not tribe or professional attainment or bank balance. All those things are of the world, and they all pass. There is some essential spirit, or source, or prime reality which remains. You may call it what you like, but names and words and ideas don't encompass it. I have sometimes found that home, and wherever I go, whatever happens around me, I cannot be moved from it, even when I think the world is falling apart.

August 23, 2008

Just because everybody's doing it doesn't make it a good idea. Everybody used to smoke cigarettes, too.

Off the top of my head, here are some more bad ideas related to debt:

Paying private school tuition with your home equity line of credit.

Buying groceries on your credit card.

Leasing a new fancy car rather than saving up for one you can afford.

Buying new furniture on credit because you can't afford to pay cash.

Investing in a can't-lose, get-rich-quick scheme.

Lying about your income on a mortgage application to get a bigger loan.

The new furniture tip was taught to me in about the sixth grade and I've never forgotten the lesson. My parents tended to reinforce the idea at home, so I thought the whole world knew that you don't buy consumer goods "on time."

Instead, the whole world managed to forget those basics of consumer finance - or thought that the guidelines had been suspended due to... ??? Magical thinking maybe?

Cookbooks

Deborah Madison: Vegetarian Cooking for EveryoneIndispensable - I use it all the time, and give it as presents to brides, young people starting out, etc. Not for vegetarians only - hence the title - a great resource for anybody wanting delicious recipes for vegetables, grains and legumes. Great sauces and salads, too.